Free Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) by R.J. Jagger Page A

doesn’t make two of us.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Meaning I’ve had a few developments,” she said. “Double-F bumped into me and asked how things were going on that railroad case. I told him about the videotape. He said to give it to Kwak and see if he could enhance it.”
    Teffinger twisted a pencil in his fingers , t hen snapped it in half.
    “Do it,” he said.
    “I will, obviously, but that’s not the main reason I called,” Sydney said. “One of the black-and-whites picked up a homeless guy for trespassing down at the tracks this morning. They got to talking. The guy said he was there the night the woman got dumped. He was sleeping in a boxcar when headlights woke him up. He looked outside and saw a pickup truck. A white man pulled a woman from the bed of the truck and dumped her on the ground. He got a good loo k at the guy.”
    “How could he?”
    “He said the guy dumped her near the front of the truck and the headlights lit his face up pretty good.”
    Teffinger remembered it.
    He paced.
    “I took his statement and then he spent an hour working with a sketch artist, but without any luck,” she added. “So there won’t be a composite sketch going on the news tonight. This guy swears though that he’ll recognize the guy if he ever sees him again.”
    She paused, w aiting.
    “What’s his name?” Teffinger asked.
    “Charles DeFry.”
    “Don’t know him,” he said. “Maybe he’ll wander off to some other town.”
    “He’s been in Denver for five years.”
    “Of course he has.”
    “Even the winters,” she added.
     
    FAN RAE APPEARED with a brisk step and grabbed Teffinger ’s arm as she walked past.
    “Come on.”
    “Where we going?”
    “To a bar I just found out about from an anonymous caller,” she said.
    “Why? What’s there?”
    “Smoke, if my hunch is right,” she said. “The same smoke that was in Nuwa Moon’s hair.”
    “Wait a minute.”
    He disappeared down the hall, into the kitchenette, and reappeared ten seconds later with a cup of coffee in hand.
    “Okay,” he said.
     
    HONG KONG starts at sea level but quickly rises as it stretches south out of Victoria Harbour. Within a short distance, the terrain gets too steep to build skyscrapers and the cityscape screeches to a stop. From the air, the city looks like a long thin strip of congestion sandwiched between the water and the mountains. The higher portion of the city is called the Mid-Levels. An enclosed escalator runs for several blocks and connects the sea level portion of the city to the Mid-Levels. In the morning, the escalator only runs downward. After ten, it runs both ways.
    That’s what Teffinger and Fan Rae ended up takin g, t he escalator , w hich carved through SoHo .
    They got off on Conduit Road and walked west for three blocks, staying on the shady side of the street. Then they came to a bar called Hei Yewan , which turned out to be a large underground hideaway, barely noticeable from the outside.
    It was closed b ut when they pounded on the door, someone finally answered—a man about 25, dressed in all things black, heavily pierced and tattooed. His hair was spiked and dyed pink.
    Fan Rae explained who she was and asked, “What’s your name?”
    “Dustin.”
    “No, your real name.”
    “On Yu Liou.”
    “Are you the owner?”
    “No, I’m the manager.”
    “Show me the back room,” she said. The man hesitated and Fan Rae said, “Just do it. I’m not in the mood.”
     
    THEY WALKED through a large dark space big enough to hold three hundred drunks, with a cement floor, black walls, multiple bar areas and dozens of speakers. At the back was a velvet rope guarding a black door.
    Teffinger pictured a doorman there at night.
    Dustin unlocked it.
    They walked down a short black hallway.
    He unlocked a second door.
    Beyond that was a room, a fairly large room. On the cement floor, in red spray paint, was a K’ung chia symbol .
    “Tell me about this room,” Fan Rae said.

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